


Keeping Me Alive

by dracusfyre



Series: Living on the Run [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hopeful Ending, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Pre-Relationship, Torture, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27564850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: Save who you can. Mourn who you can’t. Never forget, never forgive, and if you get a chance to escape, don't look back.After the Winter Soldier murders his parents, Tony spends years under Hydra’s thumb, afraid to resist and get any more of his loved ones killed. But every person has a breaking point, and Tony finds his when he realizes that the Winter Soldier is even more of a prisoner of Hydra than he is.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Series: Living on the Run [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110065
Comments: 50
Kudos: 282
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	1. Break

**Author's Note:**

> _Breakin' every chain that you put on me  
>  You thought I wouldn't change but I grew on you  
> 'Cause I will never be what you wanted  
> This fire (this fire), this fire  
> Is keeping me alive _  
> ["Keeping Me Alive"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyaZmFGyuMg&list=RDkGn13Apz8Tg&index=17&ab_channel=JonathanRoy) Jonathon Roy
> 
> Also published on [ImagineTonyandBucky](http://imaginetonyandbucky.tumblr.com/), if you are looking for more winteriron goodness.

If Tony could go back and change one thing in his life it would be:

“Another fight with your old man?” Obie said sympathetically, throwing an arm around Tony’s shoulders. He could still feel its heavy weight across his back. “He just doesn’t have your vision. I see it, though. Come on, let me introduce you to some people.” Someone had pressed a drink in his hand, no questions asked, and Tony had felt seen, felt important, and at sixteen, that was everything.

It took Tony two years – _two years_ , for all the things he will never forgive himself for, this was up there – to realize the truth. In his defense, it wasn’t all goose-stepping and “Heil Hydra” in the beginning; it was “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” it was “skipping all the red tape” and “know a guy who knows a guy,” which became “rules aren’t for people like us” and “if someone gets in your way, move them.” Then one day Tony had woken up, really woken up, and realized just how much blood he had on his hands, and he did what any scared teenager would do – he ran home to his parents.

He’d never seen his father look so furious, eyes blazing even as he stayed completely still and silent while Tony spilled everything. His mother had held on to his hand tightly even as her breath hitched, and when Tony finally ran out of words, Howard stood. Tony had flinched under Howard’s hand when it came up to his shoulder, but Howard patted him once and said, “You did the right thing, son, coming to me. I’ll take care of this.”

Two days later, Stane was waiting for Tony at the breakfast table. “Oh, Tony,” he’d said. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

It was December 17, 1990.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also for the Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV: Square T2, "Teenage Tony."


	2. Animal I Have Become

After his parent’s funeral, Tony only kept three pictures. The first was of Maria Stark, Jarvis, and his wife Ana; it was one that Tony had taken during Christmas one year when Howard had been called away for business. Tony, thirteen at the time, had secretly been glad, then felt guilty all Christmas for being happy that Howard wasn’t there. It was still the best Christmas in Tony’s memory. That picture is framed and sitting on Tony’s nightstand to remind Tony that there had once been good times and give him hope that maybe there would be again.

The second picture was a portrait of Howard, currently hanging on the wall in his workshop. It had been commissioned for Howard’s office at Stark Industries, and as a kid Tony had always been scared of it because in it Howard looked like a titan of industry, stern and untouchable. More god than man. That last part, of course, had turned out to be a lie; Hydra had proved that. Tony kept it so that he would never forget what he had done.

The third photo was in a locked drawer in his workshop, hidden under a false bottom. It was a still from a security camera video, grainy and greyscale. It showed the Winter Soldier, eyes dark and face expressionless, as he raised a pistol at the camera with Tony’s dead parents in the background. Stane had given him that photo as a warning the day after his parents' murder, but Tony kept it as a promise – even if he was never able to win his freedom from Hydra, one day Tony was going to kill that silver-armed son of a bitch for his role in Howard and Maria’s death.

He thought about that last picture a lot, particularly in times like now when he was bent over the Soldier’s arm, soldering circuits and wondering if he was fast and strong enough to kill the Soldier before he got shot down by the Soldier’s STRIKE team.

Tonight they had shown up while Tony had been getting dressed to go to an industry event, shouldering their way inside as soon as he opened the door. “You know the drill,” one of the agents said as Tony stepped back before he could be mowed over. His face was the kind of ruggedly handsome that put Tony in mind of cheap beer and domestic abuse, just the sort of man Hydra favored in their rank and file. When the man jerked his head towards the person standing behind him, Tony’s jaw tightened.

“Great,” he said in disgust, looking at the Winter Soldier. He was bleeding from somewhere because his boots were leaving bloody footprints on Tony’s floor, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him, standing motionless in the middle of Tony’s living like he was waiting for a bus. Tony knew exactly why they were here just by looking at him; the Soldier’s metal arm was visibly damaged and hanging stiffly by his side. “I told you last time, I’m not your goddamn Geek Squad. Find someone else to fix it.”

The agent actually laughed at that. “You did say that, didn’t you,” he said. “It was cute.”

Tony gritted his teeth as the other agents smirked and the Soldier just stared into space, face unreadable behind his goggles and mask. “Fine,” he said and led the ragged procession down to his lab. As they filed in, he kicked a chair out from under the work table and went to dig out his tools and a magnifying lens while the agent directed the Soldier sit down by gesturing to the chair with the rifle slung over his chest. “Go somewhere else, I don’t need you looming over me,” Tony said to the agents as he sat down, pulling a lamp over for better light. When the Soldier didn’t move, he grabbed the man’s metal wrist and pulled it into position, tapping on the back of his hand to make sure the Soldier knew he needed to stay put. The rest of the team fanned out to a loose semicircle around Tony’s worktable, leaning against the walls with their hands on their weapons.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been forced to sit here, sharing the same air with his parents’ killer and fixing the arm that had killed them. And every time it made bile rise up in his throat until he thought he would choke on it, until his hands were almost shaking with it. Each time he pried off one of the panels with a screwdriver, he thought about burying the screwdriver in the Soldier’s throat, one of the few places where his skin was bared and vulnerable. He thought of buying a gun and having it ready for the next time they invaded his home; he could hide it in his toolbox until the Soldier’s guard was down and his arm was in pieces on Tony’s work table. He'd wondered if he could trap them all in his garage and flood it with carbon monoxide before they could escape, or if he left out a poisoned bottle of whiskey would they take the bait. He’d thought of a dozen methods, ran them through his mind like beads on a rosary in the shower and before bed and particularly while he was sitting close enough to the Soldier to see his chest rise and fall with every breath.

But he never did. And he knew he wouldn’t, because he was too goddamn afraid. Afraid of the Soldier, afraid of the STRIKE team, afraid of Hydra. So instead, every time they showed up he fixed the arm like a good little peon and hated himself a little bit more.

“How long is this going to take?” One of the agents asked after a few minutes, drumming his fingers on his rifle with boredom. 

“Couple of hours,” Tony said shortly. He tapped his computer screen to turn on some music, mostly to discourage conversation, and got to work. This time, like every other time, the Soldier seemed to stay inhumanly still as Tony worked. No twitching, no fidgeting, nothing but deep, even breaths, so steady he almost seemed like he could be asleep. “Are you sure the only part of you that’s a machine is this arm?” Tony muttered under his breath. For some reason, the Soldier’s stillness always pissed him off; Tony was over here full of rage and hate, giving himself a headache with how tight his jaw was and taking every ounce of his self-control to concentrate, and meanwhile the Soldier seemed so fucking relaxed like it was a goddamn spa day. The Soldier didn’t answer, of course, which made it worse, like Tony was so far beneath his notice it wouldn’t occur to him to make conversation.

Midway down the forearm, Tony found the problem. The damage turned out to be relatively simple to fix; some of the connections had been crushed, compromising the integrity of the wires, so he carefully sliced away the damaged portions and spliced the wires back together. As he was soldering the connections, the Soldier's fingers twitched as if he had hit an electronic nerve and Tony wondered _(hoped)_ it hurt. “Finished,” he announced, putting the panel back on and sliding his wheeled stool away from the Soldier, not willing to stay in his proximity any longer than absolutely necessary. “Now just take care of the bleeding and he’s good as new,” he said, gesturing to the puddle that had accumulated beneath the work stool.

“He’s fine,” one of the agents said impatiently. “Come on, up,” he said to the Soldier, gesturing again with his rifle. The Soldier stood, flexing his hand, wrist, and arm as if checking its mobility, then turned and followed the agents out the door.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” The lead agent said with a genial smile, gloved hand reaching out to pat Tony on the cheek.

Tony slapped the man’s hand away from his face. “Fuck off and die,” he said with a snarl.

The agent’s smile froze on his face as his eyes hardened. He stepped in closer until he was looming over Tony, but Tony refused to back away. “You may think you’re hot shit because you’re Stane’s little pawn," the agent said, voice pleasant, "but Hydra destroys rich little brats like you all the time. So don’t go around thinking you’re irreplaceable.”

“Just get out,” Tony spat. The agent smiled as he left; Tony followed him to the door and kicked it shut behind them with a loud slam, just because it felt satisfying. He stood at the door for a long moment, fisting his hands in his hair and tugging until his scalp hurt, then let out a frustrated roar and kicked the door again. Then he got out the bleach and a bucket and scrubbed the Soldier’s blood off the floor under the stern eyes of Howard’s portrait, trying not to think about what his father would have to say about the coward his son had become. When he was done, he scrubbed himself in the shower until his skin was pink and went out to get blind drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark Bingo: Square A4 "Howard Stark"


	3. Nothings Fair in Love and War

Weeks later, Tony was staring at the picture of Maria, Ana, and Jarvis on his nightstand while he waited for the woman in bed beside him to fall asleep, listening to her breathing until it steadied and slowed. The picture was barely more than a square-shaped shadow in the darkness of his room, too dimly lit for him to see it properly, but he knew what it looked like, the curve of every smile and the lines at the corners of his mother’s eyes. Sometimes, if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could remember how happy he’d been when this photo was taken; on good days, the memory made him smile, but on nights like tonight he was reminded that this photo came from a whole other lifetime and that all the people in it were dead. Nights like tonight he wondered if he’d ever be that happy again and debated whether he should keep the damn thing at all. With a silent sigh, he rolled over to stare at the ceiling and tried to think of the woman’s name so that he could write her a note for the morning, but it wouldn’t come to him. He wondered if he could get away with something generic or not mentioning a name at all, and finally just decided to have Ms. Potts deal with it.

When he was sure she was asleep, he slid out from beneath the sheets and grabbed a shirt, pulling it on as he slipped out of the bedroom. He went to the kitchen and scrubbed his face with his hands as he turned on the coffee pot; he’d hoped to get some sleep tonight, but apparently no such luck.

He stood in the dark kitchen for as long as it took for the coffee to brew, watching the green digits on the oven tick away the minutes. The spitting and burbling of the coffee pot and the slight hum of the refrigerator kept the silence from being too oppressive, while moonlight from the windows cast an intermittent streak of bright white over the floor and countertop as clouds came and went across the sky. Nights were always the worst because the ghosts always came out at night; the quiet stillness made his thoughts that much louder and the loneliness that much harder to bear.

Finally the coffee was done; he filled up a thermos and went down to his workshop, breathing a little easier as JARVIS turned the lights on as he opened the door. He sipped on the coffee as he wandered through the projects in various stage of completion, running idle fingertips over pieces that needed to be attached, parts to be machined, circuits assembled; some of these were for Stark Industries, some for Tony’s own curiosity, but one or two were for Stane. He avoided those for now, not interested in making his dark mood any worse.

On the far side of the workshop that doubled as his garage, Howard’s classic hot rod was still partially disassembled as Tony tried to find the source of a persistent oil leak. That was as good a project as any to pass the hours, and maybe if he was lucky, he would be able to catch a few hours of rest on the couch before morning.

* * *

Tony woke up as Ms. Pott’s heels rang out on the stairs coming down to the workshop, jarring him out of an unpleasant dream that dissipated upon waking. Sitting up, he stretched, wincing at the crick in his neck and the headache behind his eyes.

“Late night, Boss?” Ms. Potts said, voice cool. Tony’s eyebrows drew together; usually when she found him asleep in the work shop she greeted him with brisk sympathy and a soft smile. Then he remembered the lady upstairs that he’d texted her about in the middle of the night and let out a silent sigh.

“Good morning to you too,” he said. Her only response was to give him a dry look as she made room for a stack of papers and started going over his schedule for today. No mercy from her, then, he concluded with a quirk of his lips. He stood and shuffled over to the half-drunk thermos of coffee from last night and drank it cold, rifling through the papers as he listened with half an ear.

Partway through the stack, he froze. It was a newspaper, folded innocuously amid quarterly reports and departmental audits. He reached out to pick it up and realized his hands were shaking. Closing his eyes, he inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to get his heart to stop racing. Ms. Potts was still talking as he spread out the newspaper and flipped through it quickly; whatever Obadiah was trying to tell him, it wouldn’t be subtle.

There – page 10. An article circled twice in black pen. _Defector Assassinated in Trafalgar Square._ Tony didn’t need to read the article to get the message. _The only way out of Hydra is death._ Obadiah liked leaving him these little reminders, tugging Tony’s leash a little so he wouldn’t forget that it was there.

“And then, of course, you have the flight to Afghanistan this afternoon,” Ms. Potts said, and Tony barely kept himself from cursing. “Remember?”

“Of course,” Tony lied. “The, uh..."

"Jericho demonstration,” Ms. Potts finished for him. 

"Right." He put the coffee down, suddenly queasy. The demo was ostensibly for the US military to sell the weapons, but Tony knew that they weren't the real audience; the Russians, the Iranians, and every other little tin-pot dictator would be sent videos and specs from the inaugural firing of Stark Industries’ latest missile tech, and then the real bidding war would start. Hydra would rake in more money and influence, Stane’s star would continue to rise, and then Stane would come over with a pizza and some whiskey and talk about how glad he was that he hadn’t killed Tony when he was younger _(Pierce wanted me to, but I said no, this boy’s got a gift._ Tony had heard it many times). 

“I have a few things for you to sign before your trip,” Ms. Potts said, reading off the titles of the documents as she set them in front of him to sign. “And there are some charities that are asking you for personal donations, did you want to-”

“Sure,” Tony said, flipping through the documents to make sure he’d signed everything, the blanks helpfully highlighted for his convenience.

“Sure? What does that mean, ‘sure’? You haven’t even looked at the list.”

Tony handed her back the papers and smiled brightly. “Send them all a donation, however much they are asking for.”

“All of them?” Pepper asked skeptically.

“Do I have enough money?”

“Well, of course, but-”

“Then send them all something,” Tony said. It was blood money anyway, might as well do some good with it. “Pick your favorites and send them double.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Stark,” Pepper said after a moment, clearly deciding that it wasn’t worth the fight.

“Anything else?” He asked, pasting a smile on his face.

She checked her watch. “You’ve got thirty minutes before London calls,” she said pointedly, and Tony got her point and went to take a shower and get dressed.

* * *

The fact that he was flying to Afghanistan with Rhodey was the only thing that made the trip bearable; dread was a rock in his stomach, a weight on his limbs, growing worse every time he looked at the clock. The next day, as the wind from the Jericho’s blast ruffled his clothes, Tony felt a chill despite the heat of the Afghan desert. Amidst the excited chatter of the military officers, Tony moved mechanically to the portable bar, pouring himself a stiff rum and coke to try to wash the taste of shame from his mouth.

“Good job, Tones,” Rhodey said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Everyone’s going to be talking about this for weeks, we’re all very excited.”

“It’s what we do,” Tony said with a thin smile, saluting his friend with his glass. Behind his dark wraparound sunglasses, the world seemed one step removed, muffled and dim; he felt like he was watching himself as he smiled and shook hands with the Army and Air Force brass, as they all climbed back into the Humvees, as he joked with the awed soldiers riding with him _(keep them laughing, they don’t see when they laugh._ He’d learned that in college).

But when the vehicle in front of them flipped over with a bone-rattling roar and burst of flame, he was thrown back into his body with a gasp. Suddenly the world was too close, too loud, too much; the roar of gunfire, the painful glare of the sun on white sand, the acrid scent of burnt metal. The screaming and shouting, the heat of the sand, and the way the S of Stark Industries stood out against the silver metal of the missile as it ticked loudly next to him-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV Square K1 "No Such Luck"


	4. Pain

Tony woke up and felt someone carving his heart out. “You don’t need that,” Stane said from the corner, standing just out of reach of the halo of light that was stabbing into Tony’s eyes. “I’m sure I’ll be able to find a good price for it.”

“No,” Tony mumbled, and he didn’t realize he was trying to get up until he felt hands pressing him down again. “No, no, I need that-” Then there was a sharp, sweet smell and-


	5. Riot

\- He couldn’t breathe. There was a weight pressing down on his chest and something stinging his sinuses. Opening his eyes, he gasped for breath, and when he brought his hand up to his face he realized there was a plastic tube in his nose. He started pulling and gagged when he realized it went all the way down his throat; he had been intubated while he was unconscious.

“Calm down or you’ll hurt yourself,” someone said in a soft, accented voice. A man came over and helped Tony sit up. Something tugged and sent a spike of pain through his sternum; looking down, Tony realized there were cables leading away from his chest. He started tugging at the bandages there, slapping the man’s hands away when he tried to stop him.

He stared at the metal disc in the middle of his chest. It hadn’t been a dream, they really had been carving out his heart. “What did you do to me?” he croaked. “What the hell is this?”

The man drew Tony’s hands away and straightened the bandages. “I saved your life. That is an electromagnet to keep shrapnel from entering your heart.”

“Shrapnel?” Tony repeated, but even as he said it, he remembered. The demo, the convoy, the attack. The explosion. Stane. _You don’t need that._ “Where is Stane?”

“I don’t know that name,” the man said with a frown. “Who is Stane?”

“Don’t lie to me.” Tony said sharply. He started to stand up, but the cables from the electromagnet in his chest brought him up short with another stab of pain. “He was here, I know it – I woke up, and he was talking to me -”

“Mr. Stark, you were hallucinating,” the man said gently. “Or perhaps you mistook one of the Ten Rings for this man.”

“How do you know my name?”

“We met some years ago, at a conference in Bern.” The man held out his hand for Tony to shake. “I am Ho Yinsen.” Tony stared at him hard, but the man didn’t seem to be lying. Tony was good at detecting lies; it was a side effect of being so good at telling them. Tony took his hand slowly, studying him. He was fussily dressed in a button down shirt with a tie and a vest, but all of the clothes were dingy and stained; his glasses were wire rimmed and he had a neatly trimmed goatee. He looked extremely out of place, even more so when Tony looked around and realized they were in a cave.

“Where am I?”

“You are the guest of the Ten Rings,” Yinsen said, following his gaze around the cave. “I believe we are somewhere on the border with Pakistan, if that helps.”

“Why?” As soon as he asked the question, the answer seemed obvious. “Ransom. They are holding me for ransom, right?”

Yinsen opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak there was a loud clang as the bar on the door to the cave was drawn. “I think you’re about to find out,” Yinsen said as he helped Tony stand.

When he heard the terrorist leader’s pitch, he had to laugh. Judging from the confused look on Raza’s face and the wide-eyed look of alarm on Yinsen’s, it was not the reaction they expected. But honestly, getting kidnapped from making weapons for Hydra to making weapons for the Ten Rings was just rich. He couldn’t decide which one was the frying pan and which the fire. “Sure,” he said after a moment. “Why the fuck not. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, right? Since I’m going to hell anyway.”

Tony thought he saw a flash of disappointment in Yinsen’s eyes, but Raza seemed pleased as he gestured grandly at his men and swept out the door. “Are you really going to build them a Jericho missile?” Yinsen asked once they were alone again.

“No,” Tony said, running a hand through his hair and grimacing at how filthy he was. He drew his tattered clothes closer around himself and stared down at the car battery between his feet. “But I’ve found that with men like him, you can buy a lot of time by telling them what they want to hear.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Wait. I’m sure someone will be looking for me.”

There was silence, and then he looked up to see Yinsen looking at him with sympathy. “The world likely believes you are dead, Stark. You were all but dead when you came here, after all.”

“No,” Tony said automatically. “I was with a friend, he will be looking for me.” If Rhodey survived, that is. Tony's breath hitched at the thought. But Stane would be searching, he knew. He couldn’t imagine Stane losing his golden goose without a fight.

“Inshallah,” Yinsen said mildly, still dubious. 

* * *

Tony managed to hold the Ten Rings off for some time by demanding new equipment and material and taking apart and reassembling Stark missiles that they already had. But eventually a man with cold eyes and a cruel twist to his mouth held a hot poker close to Yinsen’s eye and demanded progress, and Tony realized his time was up. If he hadn’t been found by now, he probably wasn’t going to be; his trail had grown colder and colder every day that he’d dithered in the cave.

After their cell door slammed shut behind the man, Raza, Yinsen retrieved his glasses and straightened his clothes with shaky hands while Tony stared down at the car battery at his feet and wished Yinsen hadn’t been quite so good at saving his life.

“Well?” Yinsen asked, retrieving their backgammon board from the floor from where it had been thrown. “What’s your plan now?”

“Plan?” Tony said with a bitter laugh. “The plan was to get rescued but apparently that’s not going to happen.” He was still trying to wrap his head around the thought that everyone he knew probably did think he was dead; he prodded the idea like a loose tooth, approaching it cautiously from all sides. Ms. Potts, eyes red as she walked out of Stark Industries for the last time. Mr. Hogan setting car keys down on the counter and walking away. For sale signs in front of his LA home, all of his stuff boxed up and being sold at auction. Stane would probably end up with control over Stark Industries and Hydra would carry on with their sinister plans without him; Tony could finally be rid it all. Thinking of Rhodey was the hardest, because if Rhodey survived the ambush Tony knew that he would only give up searching if the military forced him to and that he would grieve the longest. _That_ thought made him sad, but the rest of it? The thought that everyone would go on with their lives without him and he would eventually be forgotten?

That thought made him feel…free. Like he could finally breathe for the first time in years. It was a heady, dangerous feeling because it felt a little bit like hope.

“So you are just going to wait for them to kill you?” Yinsen asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

Tony sat down heavily on the barrel that served as a chair next to their rough plywood table. “What are my other options? Build them a missile and die anyway?”

“That is the legacy of the great Tony Stark, then?” Yinsen said, sitting across from him. “To die in a desert because he can’t think of a way out?”

_Way out. (the only way out is death._ It was scary how often Stane smiled when he said that) _._ Tony snorted. “I am not the man you think I am,” he said. Tony thought about what was waiting for him if he got _out_ and wanted to curl up into a ball. Except, it occurred to him, that if a _dead_ man got out, there would be nothing waiting for him. No money, no job, no home…and no expectations. Tony wondered how hard it would be to start over, to make a new life without the regrets of the old one. The prospect was both terrifying and exhilarating.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Yinsen said. He pulled out a handkerchief worn thin by repeated washing and cleaned his glasses. “But you are better than this, surely? I’ve seen your work, you are an unparalleled genius.”

“It’s going to take more than genius to get out of here.”

“Oh, so you are a coward,” Yinsen said in tones of dawning realization. “A quitter. It looks hard, so you don’t want to try. I didn’t know that.”

“I’m not a coward,” Tony protested, stung because deep down he knew it was true. “But how am I supposed to…” But before he could finish his sentence, his eyes caught on the heaps of disassembled missiles and the _how_ flashed across his mind like a comet, diagrams and steps unfolding behind his eyes in a flurry of inspiration. He hadn’t realized until now that the entire time he’d been fooling around with the tools and equipment this idea had been in the back of his mind, germinating while he’d been buying time for the cavalry to ride in. He scrubbed his hands over his face and blew out a breath, then noticed Yinsen smiling at him. “What?” he said, trying to scowl and failing in the face of that smile that seemed almost…proud.

“You have an idea,” Yinsen said.

Tony looked away but couldn’t hide the answering tug on his lips. “Yeah, I have an idea.”

“A good idea?”

“I don’t know about that. It’s a crazy idea. We probably won’t even live long enough to make it work.”

“But maybe we will,” Yinsen said, almost gently. “When do we start?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV Square K2 "Abducted"


	6. I Hate Everything About You

First was the arc reactor, glowing like a beacon in the dim of the cave. Yinsen smiled delightedly as the blue light sputtered to life with a gentle hum. It was the first thing Tony had invented in a long time that had filled him with the same rush of glee and satisfaction that had hooked him ever since he’d built his first robot. God, he hadn’t thought about DUM-E in ages; it was gathering dust in the corner of his lab, and the thought suddenly made him sad _(time to put away childish things, Tony. You’re the man of the house now._ His parents hadn’t even been in the ground yet). It reminded him how beautiful it could be to create something that wasn’t built for destruction.

“How much power does that put out?” Yinsen asked curiously, tilting his glasses down to get a better look.

“Enough for what we need it for,” Tony said. “Enough to get out.”

“I knew you could do it,” Yinsen said, putting a hand on Tony’s shoulder. Tony jerked, caught by surprise, but Yinsen just squeezed it gently and pretended not to notice when Tony’s face got hot from embarrassment. “What’s next?”

* * *

"In order to be bullet-proof, the armor needs to be thick, which will make it too heavy for me to wear, so I am going to mechanize it," Tony explained, pressing the sheets of paper flat so that Yinsen could see the suit he'd designed. "That's why we needed the arc reactor."

"Brilliant," Yinsen said, flipping between the pages to get a closer look at the different parts of the suit. After a moment a line appeared between his eyebrows and he tilted his head. "Have you given yourself no way to fight back?" he asked curiously. When Tony just looked at him with confusion, Yinsen said, "With the suit. Did you not include any weapons on purpose?"

Tony stared at him for a long time and then he had to laugh, because he hadn't even thought of building weapons into the suit. The concept of _fighting back_ hadn't even occurred to him, and wasn't that just pathetic? He'd only ever thought about surviving long enough to run away; story of his life, really. He closed his hands into fists, nails digging painfully into his palms, and had to fight the urge to crumple the pages in disgust. Yinsen must have seen something on his face because he slid them to the side as Tony crossed his arms over his chest and walked away. "No," Tony finally said, running a hand over the back of his neck. "It wasn't on purpose. I'm just an idiot."

"It's easily remedied," Yinsen said gently, and Tony nodded wordlessly. He could feel Yinsen's eyes on his back and felt ridiculously naked for someone who was wearing two layers of clothing against the chill of the cave. "How can I help?"

Tony took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and forced himself to think. He finally focused on the pile of tools, spare parts, and partially disassembled missiles that he'd been pretending to study, frowning as he thought. His eyes landed on gasoline cans and the propane tank. "We can't do guns," he said slowly, "but I think we could do fire."

A few hours later Yinsen was bent over his suit jacket, meticulously mending a ripped seam. There was a small pile of clothes beside him that needed mending, and Tony watched as he carefully placed each stitch and wondered why Yinsen tried so hard to stay presentable, tying his tie and shaving each morning before shrugging into the same suit jacket he'd worn every day since Tony had woken up here. "You know," Yinsen said eventually into the peaceful quiet, "for someone who has so much, you don't act like a man with much to lose."

Tony looked away, into the flames flickering in their wood burning stove. "I guess I don't," he admitted, picking at one of the rapidly growing callouses on his palms. "Or rather, for everything I'd be sad to lose, there's another I'd be happy to be rid of."

"No family?"

"No. Not for a long time. You?"

"Yes. We were...separated...but I hope to see them again one day. When I leave here, perhaps." Silence fell again, broken only by the sounds of conversation on the other side of the iron door to their cell. "What are you so afraid to go back to, Stark?"

Tony twitched at that and his head whipped around to stare at Yinsen. "I never said I was afraid."

Yinsen met his eyes as he cut the thread. "Didn't you?"

Tony stood up and walked away, finding something to pretend to be busy with until Yinsen put away his mending and lay down in his cot. When he thought Yinsen was asleep, he crept over and climbed into his own cot. But as he shifted, trying to get comfortable, Yinsen said, "I've seen many faces of Tony Stark. I wonder if even you know which is the real one." With that, he rolled over and didn't say anything else, leaving Tony to stare into the red-tinged darkness as the flames died down to coals.

* * *

The heat from the hot iron was scorching, even through Tony's clothes, and his shoulders and back were aching with effort, but he didn't stop hammering until the helmet was done. When it was ready, Tony dipped it in the bucket of cold water and the sizzling hiss of steam brought Yinsen over. Tony sat it on the wooden work bench, and Yinsen bent over to get a better look at it. "You know, my people have a story about a man who was unjustly imprisoned and forced to work in a mine," he said. "Over and over his captors sent him to the deepest pits and carry the heaviest loads in an attempt to break him. And even though his heart quailed in fear and his back bent under the weight of his trials, he never did. One day, his captors came to kill him and found that their attempts to destroy him had only made him stronger." Yinsen straightened. "Much like your hammer makes this metal stronger."

Tony put down the heavy leather work gloves and stretched his shoulders. "Well, I am definitely getting stronger, I'll give you that," he said, splashing some water on his face and arms, which still prickled with sweat.

"You know that's not what I mean," Yinsen said sternly as he sat down on his cot.

"I know." Tony sat down on his own cot across from him. He accepted the bowl of food that Yinsen had prepared and ate greedily while Yinsen set up the backgammon board. "But you give me too much credit," he said between bites.

"You don't give yourself enough," Yinsen countered. "You'll see. When you leave here, everything will be different."

"Maybe." Tony stared down at his food. He tried not to think about that too much - leaving here - because he knew better than to hope. He could only look ahead to the next part of the suit, to the day of their escape; maybe when they walk out of this cave as free men, he would let himself think about what would happen next.

" _You_ will be different, Stark," Yinsen said. "And it will change everything."

* * *

Weeks later, Tony and Yinsen were startled by a teeth-rattling _bang_ that echoed through the tunnels, followed by the sound of gunfire and panicked shouting. They froze with fear for a moment then stared at each other. "Do you think its...?" Tony started, afraid to finish the thought lest he jinx it.

But Yinsen had obviously had the same one. "Maybe. But we should be still be careful, just in case," Yinsen said.

"Right." They scrambled to hide the completed pieces for Tony's armored suit as the gunfight outside their room raged. It wasn't long before the sounds of gunfire started to trail off and be limited to staccato bursts every few minutes, jarring for their loudness. Tony couldn't bring himself to look away from the door, heart hammering as he waited to see who came through. 

There was an uneasy silence for a long time, then he and Yinsen both jumped at a series of loud, ringing bangs on the heavy iron door before it suddenly swung open with a screech of tortured metal. Standing in the doorway was the Winter Soldier, looking obscenely out of place here - almost unreal - in his black leather tac vest and thick canvas pants, bristling with weapons and coated with a fine layer of dust, face still hidden behind his mask and goggles. He seemed to pull all of the light towards him, warping the very air and making everything else go dim and gray. 

"No," Tony said as he backed away, color draining from his face. He felt dizzy and nauseous. "No, no, no-" The Soldier strode forward as Tony tried to escape and wrapped his cold metal fingers around Tony's throat, lifting him so that his toes were barely on the ground. As Tony grabbed the Soldier's wrist and struggled to breath, Stane came in; he glanced around the dismal cave with a look of distaste. When he saw the expression on Tony’s face, though, he broke into a smile. “Hello, Tony. You seem surprised to see me.”


	7. Home

“Imagine my surprise when I found out that you had survived the raid,” Stane said, shaking his head in mock disbelief. The Soldier's grip on Tony's throat was the only thing keeping him upright; without it he probably would have fallen straight to the floor, his limbs like jelly. “I was so angry when I found out that someone had tried to take my pawn off the board. But I should have known you would survive, you've always been a stubborn bastard.” Tony could only blink numbly as Stane hooked a finger into the collar of his shirt, pulling it away from Tony’s chest to look down at the arc reactor glowing brightly. “What's this? We will be talking about this when we get home,” he said, tapping a finger against the reactor before he continued his tour. "Looks like you've been busy. I wonder what else you've been working on?" He paused at the work desk and Tony's stomach dropped.

"I don't...I don't understand," Tony forced out from between nerveless lips, toes still barely scraping the floor, mind still reeling. How had Stane found him? Had he known where he was this whole time? 

"It was nothing personal," Stane said absently. "The attack, I mean." Tony felt sick as he watched Stane flip through the tissue-thin paper prints for the armored suit; for all of his other sins, Stane was a gifted engineer and he was easily able to read the pages that had been gibberish to the Ten Rings. He’d thought the suit could be his way out but as Stane held the blueprints for it up to the light he’d realized the depths of his stupidity. "Internal politics, you know how it is. Someone wanted you out of the way in favor of their own pawn, and I got lucky that the people who were supposed to kill you got greedy instead. This is brilliant," he said, holding up the blueprints. "Trust you to come up with something like this while locked in a cave. Maybe I should try this more often," he joked as he folded the blueprints up precisely and put them in his coat. With a nod of Stane's head, the Soldier lowered Tony to his feet and took a step back. When Tony swayed and almost fell, Stane put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you in a few days, Tony,” he said with a proprietary pat. 

Without thinking, Tony’s eyes drifted to the pistol on the Soldier's hip. Stane must have followed his gaze because the hand on Tony’s shoulder tightened, fingers digging in painfully. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he said in a low voice. “Your good friend Colonel Rhodes has been looking all over for you, and I’d hate for him to be disappointed when he's so close to finding you. What is it you like to call him? Rhodey?” 

The threat was clear: if Tony tried anything, Rhodey would die, and who knows who else. Yinsen, certainly, maybe others. Tony's friends had always been hostages for his good behavior. That had been the deal from the beginning, and Tony only had himself to blame for forgetting. For hoping. Tony nodded once in understanding, throat too tight to speak.

“Good.” Stane smiled terribly and put a hand on the back of Tony’s neck, squeezing it. “What do we say?”

“Hydra brings order, and order comes through pain,” Tony said robotically.

“And now what do you say?”

“Thank you,” he whispered. Tony kept his eyes on the floor as Stane and the Soldier left. The silence in their wake was deafening. Without anyone holding him up, Tony sat down, then bent and put his head in his hands as he stared at the footprints Stane’s shoes had left in the sandy dirt floor of the cave.

“Tony,” Yinsen started, but Tony shook his head.

“Don’t ask,” he said, voice thick. The numbness was wearing off, and what was flooding it was almost too much to bear. “Curiosity will definitely be the death of you.”

He heard Yinsen hover for a moment before he walked away; there was the sound of splashing then he came back with a cold rag to put on Tony's throat where the marks from the Soldier's hand were already darkening against his skin. “You know, of course, that I am not a member of the Ten Rings,” Yinsen said quietly as Tony took the rag and held it to his neck. “They kidnapped me after they found out that I was a doctor, and instead of ministering to the victims of violence, I am healing the originators of it. In part because I took an oath, and in part because I have not quite given up hope and so I am not ready to die. Do you know what I tell myself every time I stitch up another terrorist?” Tony shook his head. “Save who you can. Mourn who you can’t. Never forget, never forgive, and if you get a chance to escape, don’t look back.”

“And that helps?”

“It helps me,” Yinsen said. “You are not the first or only person in this position, Tony. Forced to work for people you hate. You do what you can, when you can, but the important thing is to never give up.”

Suddenly Tony felt unendurably tired. “I don’t know if I can do that,” he said. “It’s already been so long.”

“You can, and you will,” Yinsen said firmly. “I have faith in you.” Tony tilted his head and stared at him, desperately wanting to ask _how, how can you have faith_ and _why. Why me?_ But he didn't, because he didn't know if he was strong enough to hear the answer. It wasn't long before the silence was broken anew, this time by the sound of soldiers barking orders as they cleared the cave system room by room. The cavalry had arrived, and Tony greeted his rescuers with all the enthusiasm of a man facing execution. They were briskly escorted out of the caves and into vehicles waiting to whisk them away back to base, where they were hustled in front of doctors and gently but thoroughly interrogated. He never saw Yinsen again after that, which was probably for the best, Tony thought. Safer. One less person to have on his conscience as Hydra wrapped its bloody tentacles around him and dragged him back to hell. 


	8. I Am Machine

On his first day back from Afghanistan, the portrait of Howard seemed to stare at him accusingly as Tony let himself into his workshop. It looked like it hadn't been touched since the day he left. The rest of the empty, echoing house was pristine, no doubt visited by cleaners the minute Ms. Potts got confirmation that Tony was coming home, but the workshop had always been off limits; there was even a film of dust over his cars, Tony noticed. Everything was as he left it with one exception: he found the blueprints to the armored suit on his desk along with a note. _Looking forward to seeing what you come up with when you’re not in a cave – Stane._

“Fuck you,” Tony swore, then balled up the note and threw it in the garbage. He stared at the plans for a moment, the ragged edges and stains from repeated handling, the notes along the edge in Yinsen’s neat handwriting, the crisp creases that came from Stane. With an explosive sound of rage, he shoved them off his desk, along with his tools and a mug from MIT that he used for pens and pencils; it shattered on the cement floor with a sharp crash. He sat down heavily in his chair and buried his face in his hands.

Tony realized he had been staring at his empty desk for some time when Ms. Potts tapped on the glass door to the lab. When he glanced up and saw her, she waved at him with a smile and pointed at the plastic bag she had in one hand. “JARVIS, let her in,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face and plastering some sort of expression there that approximated normal, whatever the hell that was these days. “Hello, Ms. Potts, what can I do for you today?”

“Hi, Mr. Stark, welcome home,” she said, eyes running over him with worry. She started to come around the desk to set down the carryout bag, and came up short when she saw the mess on the floor. She looked from it to Tony, who avoided her eyes, and with a soft sound she just nudged everything out of the way with the toe of her shoe. As she pulled out the food - Italian, from the smell – Tony suddenly realized he was starving. With a grateful smile, he pulled out the plastic fork and started to eat. She found a stool and pulled it over, stealing a warm breadstick from the bag. “You just got home, are you sure you should be back to work already?” she said with concern, tactfully not bringing up the mess on the floor at her feet.

“It’s worse when I’m just sitting around,” Tony answered, shrugging as he took a bite of manicotti. “I like to be busy.” The truth was, he wanted to go out his front door and walk until he couldn't walk anymore; his house felt like just as much of a prison cell as the cave had.

She looked dubious but didn’t argue. “I have your mail, if you want to take a look at it,” she said, pulling it out of her bag. “Mostly social invitations, once people heard you were coming home.”

“Just leave them, I’ll look at them later.” He expected her to leave, but instead she lingered, chewing on her lip like she wanted to say something but was afraid to. “Was there something else?”

“Just…are you sure you’re alright? I thought you’d be, I don’t know…happier? To be home. If there’s anything I can do, I would be...” She trailed off as Tony put down his fork, eyes stinging and throat too tight to swallow. “I’m sorry, I overstepped, I’ll just-”

“You’re right, I’m not okay,” Tony said, glancing up to meet her worried gaze when he thought he could do it without breaking down. “But it’s nothing you can fix, so I’m just - for now at least – going to build things so I can pretend everything is okay.”

Ms. Pott’s gaze softened, and Tony had to look down at his food because she looked like given the least provocation she would give him a hug, and right now Tony wanted that more than he wanted to breathe. After a moment, he heard her sigh, and she said, “Ok. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Stark.” Tony smiled faintly when he saw her take another breadstick from the stack as she stood.

“See you tomorrow, Ms. Potts,” Tony said to her back as she walked away.

* * *

Stane gave him three days before he came by to visit, bearing pizza and talking about board meetings and shareholders. Tony played along, nodding and offering comments in all of the appropriate parts, chewing the greasy pizza and waiting for him to get to the goddamn point already.

“So, Secretary Pierce was impressed by your little idea from Afghanistan,” Stane said as he got up and helped himself to some of Tony’s liquor. “He asked how long it would be until we had a prototype.” Tony knew what that meant: what Pierce wanted, Pierce better get. The man didn't rise to the top of Hydra by tolerating failure. 

“I don’t know,” Tony said, lying only a little bit. He didn’t know _precisely_ how long it would take. Even though he hadn’t put pen to paper, the design had been running through his mind at all hours; just last night he had been brushing his teeth and realize SI had the patent to a gold-titanium alloy that would be lightweight but strong enough for the armor plating. Breakfast had reminded him of Howard’s repulsor technology, developed for the flying car project and since mothballed but much more efficient and effective than combustion propulsion. “This is something entirely different than what anyone has ever done before,” he pointed out. “The plans from Afghanistan were shit; I don’t even know if it was going to work.” That was a bigger lie. It would have. Not well, and not for long, but it would have gotten the job done. 

Stane nodded thoughtfully, tapping his heavy gold class ring against the glass. “Of course. Well, we will be keeping an eye on you. I would suggest making this your priority, understand?”

“Yeah.” Not for the first time, Tony wished Stane would just fucking say what he meant. _We are watching you. Do it now, or else._ Suddenly done with the pretense of civil conversation, Tony got up and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. “Well, I guess I’ll get to it, shall I?” he said sarcastically, saluting Stane with the bottle as he took a drink, and left Stane in his living room as he went down to his workshop.

* * *

Tony resisted working on the suit for as long as he could, sick to death of being Stane’s dancing monkey. But the ideas in his head were driving him crazy, coming so thick and fast that he couldn’t think or sleep or even take a shower in peace. Finally, after a coffee fueled all-nighter, Tony was studying a 3D holographic rendering of the sleek, powerful suit that he’d been building in his mind for days now. As he watched the projection rotating slowly, he thought that there must be a word, in German or perhaps Russian, for the feeling when you are both proud and terrified of your own creation.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” Tony muttered. The suit was the most impressive thing Tony had ever designed, armed with all the weapons that Tony could miniaturize and able to run indefinitely on the power from Tony’s new and improved arc reactor. It was fast, maneuverable, and immensely destructive; with JARVIS on board to automate flight calculations and targeting, it was easily a one-man army. Brilliant, beautiful, and awful, all at once.

Even as he admired it, the thought of Stane seeing this was a sharp stab of icy terror in his chest, difficult to even breathe around. He thought of an army of these darkening the sky, flown by Hydra agents. They wouldn't sell these, he knew; they were too powerful. Hydra would want to keep these all to itself. He didn't even want to imagine what Hydra could do with even one of them, much less ten or a hundred. Just thinking about it threatened to give Tony a panic attack, and for the first time in his life he realized that this time, it might be better to let Hydra kill the people he loved than to give in to their demands.

His finger hovered over the delete key as he wavered. He couldn't risk Hydra finding these blueprints, but it had occurred to him more than once that with this suit, he could stand a chance against Hydra, against their STRIKE teams and even the Winter Soldier. The same plan he'd had to escape the Ten Rings, but with higher stakes and much higher risk of discovery.

After a long moment, Tony exhaled, and scrubbed his hands over his face. He closed out of the program without deleting anything, hiding and encrypting it on JARVIS’s secret servers. He knew that Stane also had SI’s R&D branch working on one of these suits as well, and theirs was predictably prosaic and uninspired – overlarge, cast iron, required huge batteries to power, and relied on combustion propulsion. Basically, exactly what Tony was going to build in the cave, but bigger and more polished. It was as different from Tony’s design as a dump truck from a Ducat but Tony wasn't going to tell them that.

Stretching, Tony noticed a bottle of whiskey he'd grabbed earlier and forgotten about sometime in the middle of his work binge. There was still a corner of liquor left in the bottle, so Tony didn’t bother with a glass as he took a sip and climbed the stairs to the main floor. Now the question was, how stupid could he play with Stane before Hydra lost patience with him and started sharpening their knives?


	9. Never Too Late

The answer turned out to be six weeks. Six weeks of bluffing through phone calls, six weeks of faking it when Stane came by to check his progress, six weeks’ worth of “still trying to get the math to work out” and “unexpected difficulties.” He’d handed over the updated prototypes to the miniature arc reactor two weeks ago, though he’d made sure to transpose some numbers deep in the schematics to give them some trouble until they figured out the mistake. He could see the frustration growing on Stane’s face and in his voice, and each time it happened his stomach swooped with fear and he considered giving in. But each time he managed to kept his mouth shut; each time he told himself, _maybe tomorrow, but not today_. He knew he couldn't keep stalling forever though, and that knowledge was a lead weight in his stomach every time he woke up.

The night his time ran out, Tony was nursing a glass of whiskey and staring at the fire in the fireplace, thoughts far away. The sound of his door unlocking made him jump and his heart was still racing from adrenaline when he saw Stane open the door. It started beating double time when he saw that for the first time in weeks, Stane was in a good mood.

“Good evening, Tony,” Stane said cheerfully as he closed the door behind him.

Tony had to swallow twice before he could speak. “Stane,” he said, and set his whiskey down on the coffee table when he saw that his hands were shaking. Stane in a good mood was much more terrifying than Stane in a bad one.

“I just swung by to check in and see how you were doing,” Stane said, and Tony watched him warily as he approached, noticing that Stane hadn’t taken off his coat or his shoes, like he wasn’t planning to stay long. He had no idea what that meant, but a change in routine was never good.

“I sent an email update yesterday,” Tony said, and he had. He’d pointed out a lot of problems in the current suit design and had made suggestions while managing to not actually give any solutions. It had taken him hours to write something that spectacularly unhelpful and he had been perversely proud of it.

“Yeah, I saw that email,” Stane said, putting his hands in his pockets as he looked at the fire as well. He picked up the poker and moved some of the logs around and the fire flared, reflecting red and orange on Stane’s skin. “But you know, when I was reading it, I kept getting the feeling that you were holding out on me.”

“No,” Tony said automatically, palms starting to sweat. “I’m not. I – I wouldn’t.”

“You see, that’s what I keep telling myself,” Stane said. When he turned to face Tony, the iron poker was still in his hand. Tony’s eyes fell to it and he swallowed thickly. He wanted to run, but his limbs were frozen as Stane came closer. “But then I think, Tony miniaturized the arc reactor after six months in a cave, something Howard couldn’t do in forty years.” Stane lifted the poker and set the tip of it against the arc reactor, pressing Tony back against the couch. He gasped at the pain and pressure as Stane started to lean on him, feeling like the arc reactor casing was squeezing the air from his lungs. “And this, this mechanized suit thing, isn't half as complicated as that. So I have to ask. _Are_ you holding out on me?”

Tony stared up at Stane, who was looking down at him with a sort of patient indifference while Tony struggled to breathe. His breaths were coming fast and quick as he started to panic, and he kicked out at Stane, trying to make him back off. He grabbed at the poker and tried to push it away from him but Stane just leaned harder, the tip of the poker screeching as it etched a line in the protective glass of the arc reactor. Tony knew in that moment that Stane was fully prepared to kill him if he didn’t get an answer he liked and with that knowledge, he suddenly realized that he didn’t care. So he tightened his jaw against the pain, met Stane’s eyes, and stopped struggling. _Kill me,_ he dared Stane with his gaze, since he couldn’t breathe to speak. _Fuck you. I'd rather die._

And that was when Stane took a step back and threw the poker to the side, the ring of it against the marble floor echoing loudly. “I was afraid of this,” he said with a sigh. “Get up.”

As soon as the pressure was gone, Tony sat forward and curled over his knees, raggedly sucking air into lungs that felt bruised, each breath like a knife in his chest. Pain radiated out from the arc reactor, pulsing in time with his heart. He was staring sightlessly at the rug at his feet, spots crossing his vision as the need for air fought with the tight bands constricting his chest, when he heard Stane make an impatient noise and felt him grab the back of Tony’s shirt.

“I said _get up,_ ” Stane said irritably, pulling him off the couch. Tony staggered to his feet, hand on the arm of the couch as he steadied himself. “Let’s go. You need to see something.” He shoved Tony towards the door and Tony stumbled, almost falling on the way to Stane’s car, the concrete of the driveway scraping his bare feet.

“Where are we going?” Tony finally managed as the pain in his chest subsided to a dull ache.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Stane said. Tony sat very still and quiet in the passenger seat for the rest of the ride, fear keeping his throat closed tight as he tried not to draw Stane’s attention. It felt like another blow to the arc reactor would break him in half, split him open right down the middle like a log, and he wouldn't be able to keep from spilling every secret he’d been trying to keep.

After a few minutes of driving, Stane turned on the radio. The sound of a conservative talk show filled the dense silence in the car, an incongruous counterpoint to the tension that had Tony’s hands clenched into fists in his lap. They drove for over an hour before Stane pulled off the highway, then they spent another hour on back roads before pulling up to a back entrance of the LA port facilities. Stane showed his drivers license to the guard at the gate, and after studying it for a moment the man saluted and said “Heil Hydra” before buzzing them through. They parked at one of the dozens if not hundreds of anonymous warehouses that lined the shipyard, with only a number on the side of the building to distinguish it from the others. A keycode and fingerprint scan opened the door, which led to a blank hallway with a concrete floor and corrugated metal walls. The place was almost ominous in its banality. At the far end was another door, and Tony knew that whatever was on the other side of this was what had Stane in such a good mood.

“Here we go,” Stane said as he opened it. Tony reluctantly followed him through it, warily studying the room as he stepped inside. One side of the room was lined with hooks where body armor, helmets, and other gear hung, with a wooden bench lined up in front of a wall of lockers. In the far corner was a large munitions locker filled with rifles, handguns, and ammo cans. On the back wall of the room was what looked like an ancient upright hyperbaric chamber, rounded glass and blackened steel with a variety of cords and hoses running to it. Computers filled up most of the space in the middle along with a large metal machine, and on the third wall crates with the Stark Industries logo were stacked up almost to the ceiling.

And in the center of the room, Tony finally realized, sat the Winter Soldier. Tony felt his face go slack with shock, because this was the Soldier as Tony had never seen him: stripped of his weapons and bare-chested, no face mask or goggles. If it wasn’t for the metal arm Tony wouldn’t have even known who he was looking at, and the surprise seemed to short-circuit Tony’s normal seething hatred. The Soldier was sitting in a heavy metal chair that was haloed with some sort of machinery, staring straight ahead while white-coated technicians moved around him, checking the device and looking at something on the computers that were hooked up to the chair.

“Come on,” Stane said, and started towards him. When Tony didn’t follow, feet rooted to the floor with dread, Stane grabbed his arm and dragged him forward. They stopped about ten feet away from the chair, just far enough away that they weren’t going to disturb the work of the technicians but close enough that Tony could almost count the stubble on the Soldier’s jaw.

“Get a good look,” Stane said. He put his heavy, meaty hand on the back of Tony’s neck, keeping his head facing the Soldier, as if Tony could drag his eyes away from the man in front of them. As they’d approached, the Soldier’s eyes had flickered towards them, studying them. They lingered on Tony’s face for a long moment, and a slight line appeared between his eyebrows before he looked away. Tony noticed, incongruously, that his eyes were an icy blue, almost gray, but were strangely vacant as he stared across the room and ignored the activity around him, just like he always did with Tony. Without his normal tac gear, Tony could see that the metal of the arm went well into his chest; ropy, thick keloid scars marked the boundary between skin and metal.

That was also when Tony noticed the restraints on the Soldier’s arms, binding him to the chair.

“What-“ Tony started, but Stane squeezed him by the nape of his neck and shook him slightly to silence him.

“See, you seem to think death is the worst thing we can do to you,” Stane said into his ear. “Or torture. Pain and death, that’s all you think we can do. Kill you, kill your friends, blah blah blah. Right?” When Tony didn’t move, too stiff with fear, Stane put his hand on the back of Tony’s head and forced it up and down in a parody of a nod. “But it’s not. You see, with this machine, we can take your mind, pour it into a blender and,” at this, Stane got close enough that Tony could feel his breath, making his skin crawl, “pour whatever we want back in.” Stane straightened. “Watch.”

Stane went up the Soldier and took a chair from one of the technicians so that he could sit with his face level to the Soldier's. “What’s your name?” he asked him, and the man’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. After a moment he just shook his head. “It’s James,” Stane said. “Your name is James Barnes and you were born in Brooklyn, did you know that?” The Soldier shook his head again. Stane threw a smirk over his shoulder at Tony before turning back to the Soldier. “Mission report,” he ordered.

At this, the look of confusion cleared. “Level 9 target eliminated. All witnesses eliminated. Package retrieved. All combatants returned to extraction point with minimal injuries. No damage sustained to Hydra property,” the Soldier reported. His voice was softer than Tony expected, but gravelly with disuse.

Stane turned to Tony and said, “Did you want to ask him any questions?” When Tony only shook his head, Stane frowned. “Spoilsport,” he complained, but he stood and gestured for Tony to take his place in the chair. Tony stepped forward reluctantly, an awful sense of dread making his limbs heavy. It wasn’t cold in the room but Tony felt a chill anyway, almost deep enough to make him shiver.

“Stane, please,” Tony said, not even sure what he was pleading for. _Stop._ _Don’t make me do this._ He didn’t even know what was going on, but something was deeply wrong here and it was making Tony feel a bone-deep terror that he hadn’t felt since he’d woken up to see Stane at his kitchen table when he was 18 years old.

“Sit,” Stane ordered, and shoved Tony into the chair. Now Tony was close enough to see the darker line of blue that circled the Soldier’s irises and the chapped skin of his lips, the cleft in his chin and the straight line of his nose. The Soldier was staring at him, and once Tony met his eyes he couldn’t look away. “Do you know who this man is?” Stane asked him, and after a moment of hesitation, the Soldier shook his head. “This is Tony Stark,” Stane said. “Remember that.” As the Soldier nodded once, Tony heard Stane ask the technicians, “Is everything ready?”

“Yes, sir.” At that, one of them came forward and put a hand on the Soldier's shoulder, pushing him against the back of the chair. The machinery that surrounded the chair began to hum as it lowered into position. The whole time, the Soldier’s eyes never left Tony’s, which is why Tony could see the exact moment when the blankness sharpened and turned into fear as he realized what was happening. A bite guard was forced into his mouth, and Tony could see his hands clench into fists and strain against the clamps binding him to the chair. After a moment a headset came down to surround the Soldier’s head, forcing it back until he was looking at the ceiling. Until now, he had been almost completely silent, but as the machine whirred to life, Tony heard a strangled whimper and saw the Soldier try to flinch away from the metal that was covering his face. Tony closed his eyes and tried to turn his face away but Stane was behind him and forced his head forward.

“Watch,” Stane said. “Or I’ll make you flip the switch.”

Tony opened his eyes. A technician glanced towards Stane and must have gotten the go-ahead because he looked down at the panel in front of him and activated the machine. There was the sound of electricity buzzing and the Soldier jerked, screaming. The tendons of his neck stood out from the strength of his screams and they echoed off the metal walls, burrowing deep into Tony’s ears until he thought he’d hear the ring of them for the rest of his life. He watched as the Soldier's back bowed and his body convulsed, feeling like he was going to throw up. The sound of electricity cycled louder and louder, and the Soldier kept screaming even as his voice grew ragged, until finally the machine stopped and the room fell silent. The Soldier went limp, panting, as the headset lifted off of him and he was allowed to sit up again. His face was pale and his hair soaked with sweat, and he shivered in the aftermath, still twitching slightly.

“Hey,” Stane said, snapping his fingers at the Soldier. After a second, the Soldier focused his gaze on Stane. “What’s your name?” The Soldier's brow furrowed as he thought, and after a moment he shook his head. “What’s his name?” he asked, gesturing to Tony. The Soldier glanced at Tony, features blank with unrecognition. He shook his head again, and Stane slapped him. The sudden sharp noise made Tony jump. “I told you to remember,” Stane said sternly, and the Soldier swallowed but still shook his head after a long minute. “Fine. Give me a mission report.” The Soldier's agitation just got worse, and he shook his head again. “Release his restraints,” Stane told the technician, then took a pistol from the small of his back and handed it to the Soldier. “Now take this apart and put it back together.” Looking relieved to finally get an order he understood, the Soldier's hands flew over the gun, and in moments it was pieces, all the way to the hammer and slide release spring, then it was back together, locked and loaded. Stane smiled approvingly and said, “Now unless you can tell me what your name is, I want you to point the gun at your temple and-“

“Stane!” Tony shouted as the Soldier's hand started to move.

“Yeah, I think you get the point,” Stane said. He took the gun out of the Soldier's unresisting hands. “No use beating a dead horse.” With a painful grip under Tony’s arm, he pulled him out of the chair to stand facing him. “You _do_ get the point, right?” Stane said, picking a piece of lint off Tony’s shirt and flicking it to the side. “If not, let me make it crystal fucking clear. If you think you can take your secrets to your grave, that you can defy Hydra and there’s nothing we can do about it, you’re wrong. All we gotta do is stick you in that chair, give you a few targeted pulses of electricity to your hippocampus and neo-cortex, among others, and you’ll do anything. I. Say," he said, finger tapping the arc reactor for emphasis after each word.

Tony stared at Stane and absolutely believed him. Whatever happened in that chair wasn’t just about pain, it was about erasing; whoever the Soldier was - _James,_ if that was really his name and not just something Stane made up – had been before, Hydra had erased him so thoroughly that not even his name remained, just the Soldier. Tony tried to imagine the terror of that, of having his memories and his personality and his will taken from him, every bit of him laid bare while Hydra picked over what they wanted and discarded what they didn’t. “I understand,” Tony managed.

“Good!” Stane said with a smile. “So when I say, ‘design me a fucking mechanized suit, Tony,’ what are you going to do?”

“Design the suit.” 

“Right answer.” Stane put his arm around Tony’s shoulders and led him towards the exit. “Let’s get you home.”

Tony was silent the whole way. Stane, on the other hand, was still in a great mood, switching talk radio for golden oldies and drumming his hands on the steering wheel. Tony only spoke when spoken to, giving only one word answers as Stane came inside for a drink and rambled something about the SI board of directors. He felt numb inside but forced himself to nod and answer in all the right places, until finally Stane tired of whatever game he was playing and left.

When the door finally closed behind him, Tony stood and went to the windows that faced out onto the ocean. _Save who you can. Mourn who you can’t. Never forget, never forgive, and if you get a chance to escape, don't look back._ Tony could still hear the Soldier's screams and see Stane’s smile, and as he stared at his reflection in the dark glass, he knew he was going to do something very, very stupid.


	10. Get Out Alive

**_Now_ **

_“Save who you can,” Tony said to himself as he splashed water on his face. He blindly grabbed for a towel and dried off, meeting his eyes in the mirror for what felt like the first time in years. “Don’t look back.” He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves, and went out into his bedroom. He picked up the photo that sat on his bedside table and took it out of the frame, tucking it into the pocket of his pants. Glancing around his bedroom, he nodded once, and went down to his workshop. He saluted the painting of Howard on the wall then dug out the photo of the Winter Soldier from his desk and set it on fire, dropping it to the concrete floor and watching it burn._

_“Ready, JARVIS?” he asked. He ground the last bit of embers into the concrete to put them out._

_“Are you ready, sir?”_

_“Yep,” Tony lied. “Let’s rock and roll.”_

_“Let it Burn Protocol initiated.” As JARVIS spoke, Tony felt the first explosion rock the house, rumbling through his feet as he stepped into the matte black suit in the gantry in the middle of the room. The facemask closed over his face as cracks appeared in the walls of the lab, and as the ground fell away from his feet he was already in the air._

* * *

_**36 days ago**  
_

Once he was sure that Stane was gone for good, Tony went down to his work shop and said, “Wake up, JARVIS, we have work to do.”

Sitting down at his workstation, he opened up the master file with the suit schematics and eyed the hologram critically. The hardest part of the suit to master was going to be the flight system, so he isolated and magnified that part from the diagram, studying the repulsors built into the gauntlets and boots with stabilizers along the back. “Start machining the parts I’m going to need for these,” he said. “Circumstances have changed and we are going to need to hit the ground running, so to speak."

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said, and the whirring of machinery became a low hum, punctuated by sharp _bzzts_ as parts were cut and de-burred. Tony studied the prototype, exploding the diagram, moving it around, and after a while came up with a short list of non-critical design items he could spoon feed to Hydra to show his ‘enthusiastic’ cooperation. An hour later, the whirring stopped and the sudden quiet broke Tony out of his concentration. He sat up and stretched, wincing as his back popped. Standing, he went over to the coffee maker and started a new pot, then dug under the counter for his emergency stash of scotch, splashing a fingers worth in his mug while he waited for the coffee.

He had realized two very important things today. The first was that the Soldier needed saving even more than Tony did; the knowledge that the man was Hydra’s slave, kept ignorant and locked up until Hydra needed an attack dog, had shifted Tony’s world view like a kaleidoscope, shaking up everything he thought knew and making an entirely new pattern. The second was that he couldn't keep waiting around for a chance to escape, he was going to have to _make_ one.

This suit, he knew, was the key to both of those realizations. But this half-baked, insane plan to rescue the Winter Soldier was going to kick the anthill big time and Tony also knew he needed to have some kind of plan for dealing with Hydra in the aftermath. This wasn’t going to be like Afghanistan, where he thought he was out and got pulled right back in again. The stakes were way too high this time.

With that thought in mind, when the coffee was done, he filled up his mug and went back to his desk. He pulled up the operating program for the suit and created a subroutine to overload the reactor, ignoring the flash red warning that said that this would result in a critical core breach and an uncontrolled chain reaction, and set the activation code as “Last Resort.”

One way or another, he thought as he sipped on his doctored coffee, this suit _would_ be his way out.

* * *

**_32 Days Ago_ **

Tony stared tiredly at the news as he took a swallow of stone-cold coffee. The breaking report was about the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Iran was already blaming Israel, who was of course denying it, but in response Iran was threatening to pull out of the treaties against nuclear enrichment and swore they could split the atom within the year. Political and military analysts were seeing storm clouds on the horizon unless someone backed down and talking about how another war would tax America's already overstretched military. Tony, meanwhile, could tell that this assassination had Hydra's fingerprints all over it, and knew that this was almost certainly the work of the Soldier. "JARVIS," Tony said, muting the television. "I need you to break into Hydra’s servers and find everything you can on the Winter Soldier. Cross reference it with the name James Barnes.” There was a chance that Stane had made the name up, but it seemed unlikely – from what he could tell, the Soldier would have responded to anything, and ‘James Barnes’ was a lot more specific than a simple ‘John Smith’ or ‘Joe Blow.’ “Actually, while you’re at it,” Tony said, having a sudden thought, “I want all of Hydra’s files. Copy them to one of SI’s remote servers.”

Hours later, Tony was just finishing up the wiring assembly for the repulsor system when his computer dinged. Setting down the soldering gun, Tony rubbed his eyes tiredly and turned on his monitor to see what JARVIS had found. To his dismay, there were thousands of files on the Winter Soldier; as he scrolled down the list, he realized that they went back decades. “Fuck,” he said aloud as he looked at the dates and the file names, most of which were a string of letters and numbers that no doubt made sense to someone in Hydra but gave no clue as to what the file contained. He buried his head in his hands and tried not to cry at the enormity of the task in front of him. He was so tired that his eyes were blurry and his head was pounding, but every time he tried to close his eyes he kept seeing the Soldier’s body arching with pain and hearing his screams. 

“Sir, it has been twelve hours and thirty-six minutes since you last ate,” JARVIS said. “And you’ve made four mistakes in the past fifteen minutes. You need to rest.”

“I have?” Tony pulled his magnifying glass back over to the circuit board and saw what JARVIS was talking about. “Shit. Alright, fine.” He pushed away from the desk and went to the bar sink next to the coffee pot and ran his head under cold water for a second. He came up and wiped his face and the back of his neck, shivering as water dripped from his hair down his back, and went upstairs to look for food. Leaving his work shop felt like he was crossing into hostile territory, like he could be attacked at any moment. And he could, he thought as he opened the refrigerator. Stane had made sure that he always had free access to Tony’s home, because a locked door meant secrets and the only secrets Hydra allowed were their own. He wished he could just walk away from this place, blow it up and find a place to live that Hydra had never stepped foot in, a place that would feel like it was _his –_

He froze with a jug of orange juice in his hand. He stood there, thoughts racing, for so long that the chiller on the refrigerator came on with a hum. Then Tony said “Huh” to the boxes of leftovers and absently shut the fridge door, OJ still in hand. 

* * *

**_25 Days Ago_ **

“JARVIS, this doesn’t make sense,” Tony said, rereading the file for the fifth time. “This thing is saying that the first Winter Soldier was James Barnes, but the _current_ Winter Soldier is James Barnes.” It was hard to think that it was a clerical error, since the earliest files went back to the 1940s and consisted of paper files that had been scanned into a computer sometimes in the 80s. “Is it an alias? Are all Winter Soldiers called ‘James Barnes’ as a security precaution?”

“Facial pattern analysis indicates that it is the same James Barnes,” JARVIS said, and it flashed up an image that looked like a scanned-in polaroid; in it the man was unconscious on an operating table, face dirty and bloody and pale. Next to it JARVIS pulled up an image from Hydra’s own security footage of what the Soldier looked like without his goggles and mask on. There was a vague resemblance to Tony’s eyes, but as the facial recognition algorithm measured the features in each photograph, the conclusion was mathematically precise – there was a 99.7% chance that it was the same man in each photo.

Tony’s face went slack with shock. “How is that possible? He’d have to be almost 100 years old!”

“That part I don’t know, sir.”

“Holy shit.” Tony went back to the original file, reading it more carefully. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he read. “Born 1917. American POW.” He paused at that and sat back in his chair. “Why does that sound familiar?”

In response, JARVIS pulled up a Wikipedia page on Tony’s screen. As he read it, Tony was speechless; for a long moment, he flipped screens between the dead-eyed man from Hydra’s surveillance footage and the smiling man with his arm around Captain America, but this time he didn’t need JARVIS to tell him that it was the same man. The implications made his stomach turn, and as he stared at the screen he exhaled shakily and covered his mouth with his hands. _80 years._ James Barnes had been in Hydra’s clutches for _80 years._

He stood suddenly, sending his chair rolling backwards. “We’re doing another flight test. Right now.” 80 years was already far too long, and Tony wasn't going to let it be one more day longer than it had to be.

* * *

**_19 Days Ago_ **

“Tony!” Ms. Potts said with surprise. “I didn’t expect you in the office today.”

Probably because Tony had been dodging Stark Industries for a while now, only coming out of his lab long enough to get her to leave him alone before burying himself in work again. It had occurred to him as he got in his car to go to SI headquarters, blinking in the bright sunlight, that this was the first time he had been outside of the house since Stane’s forced excursion. “Yeah, I wanted to meet with you,” Tony said, shutting the door behind him. He set a stack of papers in front of her as he sat down.

“What’s this?” She said, flipping through the papers. There was a line of confusion between her eyebrows which only deepened as she started reading them.

“I’m making you CEO of Stark Industries,” Tony said. “Effective two weeks from now. Should be an easy transition, you do most of my job anyway.” He grabbed a pin from her desk and clicked it, the sound loud in the sudden silence. “Sign on the highlighted line, please,” he added, holding the pen out to her, and despite everything he had to smile at the stunned look on her face.

* * *

**_11 Days Ago_ **

Tony put a hand on Rhodey’s arm and met his eyes, willing him to understand. “I’m saying that Afghanistan wasn’t a random attack,” he said urgently. “I think I was being targeted, and I think whoever did it might try again.” He palmed a thumb drive from his pocket and slid it across the table. In the Hydra files, JARVIS had found that a senator named Stern had been behind the Afghanistan attack, apparently trying to get Tony out of the way so that his good buddy Justin Hammer and his company Hammer Industries could take over SI's lucrative military contracts. There was all of that and more on here, just enough information that if Rhodey put all the threads together he would start getting the bigger picture. Pierce, the STRIKE teams, all of it. “If anything happens to me, I need you to finish what I’ve started.”

“Tony, if you are afraid for your life-“ Rhodey started, still looking dubious but starting to get alarmed.

“Not just me. You. Ms. Potts. Anyone I'm friends with. I can’t do anything to make these people suspicious,” Tony insisted. It was strange to feel like he was lying even though every word he’d said was true. “No unexplained bodyguards, no sudden trips, and absolutely no cops.”

“I don’t like this,” Rhodey said emphatically. “You’re asking me to sit back and wait to see if someone kills you!”

“I know what I’m doing,” Tony said. _That_ part was a lie. He had a plan in the broadest definition of the word; mostly he was making it up as he went along and praying he could handle the fallout. “I need you to trust me.” Rhodey’s mouth was a grim line and his jaw was tight, and Tony knew he wasn’t convinced so he pulled out his trump card. “I can’t do this unless I know you are safe,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning forward. “I won’t risk you.” It took a long minute, and Rhodey looked like he was swallowing something unpleasant, but he finally nodded and put the thumb drive in his pocket. Tony exhaled and sagged with relief. “Thank you."

“When this is over, you better have a good damn explanation,” Rhodey said threateningly, and Tony barked out a humorless laugh.

“You won’t even believe me when you hear it.”

* * *

**_8 Days Ago_ **

After Tony hit save on the final design of the suit, he stumbled over to the couch and landed on it face first, exhausted. He was laying on the couch, eyes drifting shut as he went over his plan for the hundredth time trying to figure out if he’d missed anything when the lab went dark. “What the hell, JARVIS?”

“Sir, it’s been 56 hours since you last slept,” JARVIS said. “I’m turning off your systems for a minimum of twelve hours.” The light in the stairwell going up to the main floor turned on, its glow just enough to let Tony get from the couch to the door without running into anything.

Tony stayed stubbornly on the couch. “We don’t have twelve hours to waste,” he said. “Turn my power back on.”

The lights stayed off. “Sir, you are a hazard to yourself and others.” Tony scowled and wondered if he had actually programmed JARVIS like this or if he was channeling the man himself. "Also, there's nothing for you to do while I assemble the suit."

“Fine. Ten hours.”

“Ten hours," JARVIS repeated. "I will be monitoring the situation while you sleep,” he added, and Tony knew that he meant not just monitoring Stane and James, but also Tony’s vital signs to make sure he actually slept.

“You’re insufferable,” Tony accused as he made his way up the stairs.

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

**_2 Days Ago_ **

“Sir, there’s something you should see.”

Tony looked up from the fine-tuning he was doing on the suit’s shoulder-fired weapons to look at the computer screen. JARVIS had maximized the window where he was constantly monitoring Pierce’s communications and highlighted a text that had just been sent. It was to an unknown number and all it said was _lvl 10, CovJer10131973 nlt 200810162200Z._ The first part was clearly a target identifier and Tony knew enough about the military to recognize the latter as a date time group, set for five days from now. “Bring up the camera feed,” Tony said, and sure enough when Tony looked at the video surveillance of the room where James was kept, he could see that the lights in the room were on and a technician was already in the room powering on computers. They’d found out a while ago that what Tony had taken for a hyperbaric chamber was in fact a cryostasis chamber, which partly explained why James was almost a hundred years old but looked younger than Tony.

“Shit." Tony exhaled long and low, feeling his heart rate spike with nervousness. "How long it takes to thaw him out? Was that in his files?”

JARVIS was silent for a moment. “Evidence suggests approximately 24 hours from the time the procedure is first initiated,” he said.

“Right,” Tony said grimly, turning back to his work with a new urgency. “Guess it’s time.”

* * *

**_Now_ **

Tony flew north along the coast as his house collapsed into the Pacific Ocean behind him, throwing billowing clouds of dust and smoke into the air as carefully placed explosives reduced it to a smoking ruin. It was thrilling and terrifying to know that for all intents and purposes Tony Stark was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He'd become a dead man after all, and now the only thing left was this suit and his mission: rescue the Winter Soldier then burn Hydra to the ground.

“Pull up James' video feed for me," Tony said as he flew. Since he was over water, he set the suit to autopilot and shifted his attention to the small window at the corner of his HUD. James was out of the cryostasis chamber, sitting on a chair as a medical assistant appeared to be taking his vitals. Every now and then he shivered, still shirtless. Other technicians were milling around, tending to the computers, and standing guard were was two members of the STRIKE team, hands on their weapons as they kept an eye on him. His records had indicated that he was prone to ‘erratic violent outbursts,’ which Tony figured was code for “periodically tries to fight back.” Tony had actually been happy to read that, because it meant that Hydra hadn't managed to break him completely. Right now, though, James just seemed willing to numbly submit to whatever the technicians were doing, his long hair a curtain in front of his face as he stared at the floor.

“Sir, we are approaching the facility,” JARVIS said, and minimized the video. Tony flew lower to the water, navigating around the giant cargo ships at dock. Even for a twenty-four hour facility it was late, and there were only one or two ships that had people still unloading shipping containers. He landed close to the Hydra facility but out of the line of sight; he had managed to camouflage the suit to the best of his ability, but he couldn’t hide the bright lights of the repulsors so he made the rest of the approach on foot.

JARVIS’s scanners found four total guards around the building, patrolling in pairs. By sticking to the deep shadows cast by the stacked shipping containers and the orange-yellow glow of the sodium-vapor security lights, Tony got within hearing distance and hit them with a pulse of high-pitched wave frequency. They both stiffened and fell over, paralyzed, helmets bouncing off the pavement hard enough to knock them unconscious. Tony bound them with their own zip ties and hid them out of sight, then used his backdoor access to the security system to unlock the doors and set all the surveillance cameras on a one hour loop. As he strode through the door into the lab, all eyes turned to face him, and before anyone could even speak there was a _brrrt_ noise and they fell to the floor, killed by the precision targeting system Tony had built into his suit. 

When JARVIS confirmed they were all dead, Tony took off the helmet and looked down at one of the bodies; the one closest to him had been here a month ago, monitoring James’ vitals as they wiped his mind. This was the first time Tony had killed anyone and he expected to feel.. _something_ , sad or upset or even vindictive, but he didn’t really feel anything. It all felt too easy, and Tony knew it was because he had designed a suit that had _made_ it that easy. All the more reason that Hydra couldn't be allowed to get their hands on it.

James was still sitting in the chair, watching Tony as he approached; he hadn’t even gone for cover as everyone around him had died. Tony wondered if it was out of surprise or indifference. “Do you know me?” He asked, coming to stand in front of him. James studied his features for a moment and shook his head. “My name is Tony Stark. You are James Buchanan Barnes, and I am here to rescue you.” Tony offered him a hand to get to his feet, but James didn’t move, he just stared at Tony with those glacier blue eyes. There wasn't blankness in them now, only a narrow-eyed look of consideration. “Come on,” Tony tried again. “We’re escaping. We have to hurry before more people show up.”

James didn’t move. “There is no escape from Hydra. The only way out is-”

“Death, I know.” Tony kept his hand out but gestured expressively around the room with the other. “But they never said _whose_ death.”

James studied him again, then turned his gaze to the dead bodies. Finally, after a long moment, he took Tony’s hand and let him pull him to his feet.


	11. Heathens

They made it to the long-term cruise liner parking lot where Tony had staged an SUV for their escape when James stopped and said, “Tracking devices.”

“Shit.” Of course Hydra would have some way of tracking him; he was an expensive tool, after all, not a person. Tony had Jarvis scan him and found two transmitters, one in the metal arm and one in the back of his neck close to the spine. “I can jam them both until we are in a safe place to remove them,” Tony said, “but I can’t get the one out of the arm without tools. And the one in your neck…” Tony trailed off when James pulled a knife out of the sheath on his thigh and held it out.

“Get rid of it.”

Tony wanted to protest but he bit his tongue when he saw the look on James’ face. He would want it out of him as soon as possible as well; he was lucky that Stane hadn’t thought to put one in him too. He climbed laboriously out of his suit and took the knife as James turned around and bent his head. _Guess I get to stick a knife in the Winter Soldier after all,_ Tony thought with a grim smile. Years of working on circuit boards had given him a steady hand, so even though he grimaced as blood welled to the surface when he sliced through James’ skin, he was quick and efficient. “What should we do with it?” Tony asked when it was on his palm, tiny and shaped like a pill capsule. James took it from him and crushed it with his metal hand, letting it fall to the ground before grinding them into the pavement with his boot.

James helped him pack the suit in the back of the SUV and then they both went for the driver’s seat. “I have the key,” Tony said, pulling it out of his pocket and closing his hand around it when he saw James eyeing it. “Also, you don’t know where we’re going.” 

“If Hydra comes, I should be driving,” James said with a scowl. 

“If Hydra comes, you should be shooting,” Tony countered, and James considered that for a second before going around to the passenger seat. He’d already stashed one of the duffle bags of arms and ammunition that they’d taken from the lab in the floorboard, and as Tony pulled out of the parking lot he began methodically loading all of the rifles and spare magazines. It was a funny thing to find relaxing, but it made him feel safer to think that all of the Soldier’s lethality was on his side for once.

By the time they got onto the 5, the car had fallen into a strained silence, so Tony turned on the radio. The news of his demise had made headlines about an hour into their drive, though the police being interviewed were very careful not to officially declare Tony dead. The radio was the only sound in the car until they were four hours north of LA, when James finally spoke again. “Why?” He asked, his voice low and gruff and barely audible over the radio, even though Tony had the volume low.

Tony, who had been waiting for the question since he first took his helmet off in the lab, glanced over to see James studying him. “Do you recognize me at all?” After a moment of hesitation, James shook his head and Tony turned his eyes back to the road. “You and I have a long history,” Tony said finally. “None of it good. I don’t blame you for it,” Tony added hurriedly when he saw James stiffen. “I mean, I did, but I don’t now, because...Well, the point is, I realized recently that we are – _were_ – both prisoners of Hydra. So I figure that means we have a common enemy, and that we should work together."

"You want me to help you take down Hydra?"

"Well, yeah." Tony glanced back over; James' expression didn't say what he thought of that. "Unless you don't want to, I guess. But we should still stick together until it's safe. I don't know about you, but I'm not going back."

James snorted at that. “So where’re we going?”

“Safe house.” There was silence in the car again as Tony pulled off the next exit to get gas. After he started the pump, he climbed back into the car and opened the center console. It was filled with protein bars, candy, chips, and drinks. “Pick your poison,” Tony said as he grabbed a bottle of water and a candy bar. James eyed Tony and then the stash of snacks before picking out a protein bar and bottle of Gatorade.

“What’s this?” He asked as he eyed the unnaturally blue drink.

“Sugar water, mostly.” Tony chugged his water as James took an experimental sip. “Your file says after you, uh, wake up you need a lot of protein and electrolytes and stuff. So drink up, it’s good for you.”

James grimaced at the taste but drank it steadily like a person that is used to taking medicine. When he was done he started making his way through the stack of protein bars with a grim determination that was almost impressive, if Tony hadn’t started to worry that he should have packed more food for the drive. They weren’t even a quarter of the way to their destination and James had eaten more than half the food. Finally the pump turned off with a _thunk,_ so Tony finished paying and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“If you've read my file,” James said as they got back onto the highway, “then you know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

“That’s not a high bar,” Tony said with a ghost of a smile. “I know more about you than you know about yourself.” James shot him an unamused look and Tony shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“You said your name was Tony Stark,” James said. He pointed to the radio. “If that’s true, why do the police think you’re dead?”

Tony’s eyebrows climbed. He didn’t realize James had been paying attention to the radio; he’d spent the entire drive so far staring out the window and checking the rearview mirror, presumably looking for Hydra. “Because I want them to think I’m dead,” Tony said. “That way I can be free to do what needs to be done.”

“What did Hydra want you for?”

“I make weapons. _Made_ ,” Tony corrected. “Their little pet engineer, cranking out planes and tanks and bombs for them,” he added bitterly, gesturing to the weapons in the bag at James’ feet. “I have also been fixing your arm for the past few years.”

That made James’ eyebrows draw together. “Music,” he said after a long moment. “I remember loud music.”

“Yeah, that was me. You remember that?”

“Hydra doesn’t exactly play me tunes on a regular basis,” James said dryly. “It stood out.”

Tony barked out a surprised laugh and turned the radio away from the news to classic rock. They switched vehicles a few hours later, then again at the border with Oregon. When they finally pulled in to Tony's cabin - one left to him by Ana and Edwin, and significantly renovated over the past month - Tony turned off the car and sagged against the seat. It wasn't until he felt his shoulders and jaw relaxed that he'd realized how tense he'd been the whole drive; he was suddenly acutely aware that he had been awake for almost 24 hours. "Home sweet home," he said unnecessarily as the engine ticked and cooled.

"I'll be the judge of that," James said. He climbed out of the car then proceeded to fit an unlikely number of firearms on his person before he disappeared into the woods. Tony shrugged and started to lug the suit piece by piece into the house, and when he took a moment to fire up the surveillance system he could see James evaluating the perimeter, pausing each time he noticed one of Tony's cameras. "I may not be an expert, but I _am_ paranoid," Tony said to the monitors, then went back to the SUV for another load. By the time he had the suit in the gantry and ready for the next time he needed to put it on, James had finished his patrol and was standing in the middle of the living room. "Does my security meet your standards?" Tony asked as he headed for the freezer. For now, the cabin was stocked with shelf-stable food and the freezer was packed with instant meals, enough that they could avoid leaving for a few weeks as long as they didn't want things like milk or eggs or fresh fruit and vegetables.

"I have some suggestions," James said, following Tony into the kitchen. "Mostly involving explosives."

"Then you must not have checked around the foundation," Tony said. He picked out a frozen pizza and, checking the instructions, turned on the oven. He turned around to see James still standing there, looking uncertain, and he cursed internally. He wasn't used to having someone else in his space; it was going to take a while for him to get used to having a roommate. "Come on, I'll show you around."

James' room was in the top of the house, in a renovated attic space. Tony had picked it because the windows gave it excellent views on all sides of the house, and since James' files said he was a sniper he thought James would appreciate it. But as they stood there, Tony realized he had underestimated how tall James was, because if he stood anywhere other than the middle of the room he would have to duck. He'd also have to sleep diagonally on the queen size bed, but from the way James had gone all still and quiet when he'd looked at the room, Tony thought it might be good enough. There was one bathroom and it was on the ground floor, next to another bedroom. That was supposed to have been Tony's, but when he'd tried to sleep there he had woken up multiple times with panic attacks, feeling exposed and vulnerable, so his room was now in the basement. The basement had started life as a cellar but Tony had expanded it and reinforced it until it could probably now be classified as a bunker instead. "And this is HQ," Tony said as the lights came on to the main room. He'd moved everything important out of the LA home before he'd sent it into the Pacific, including his computers, JARVIS's servers, and all of the tools and machinery he would need to design and build new suits. What drew James' attention, though, was the murder board that took up one wall of the room. It was pretty sparse at the moment because Tony had only just started to dig through the Hydra files he'd downloaded, but there was Stane, Pierce, and Stern, as well as some of their more prominent hangers-on.

There were also the people that Tony had seen last time he was in the lab with Stane. Tony picked up a marker and put an X on all the faces he remembered. James pointed to one that he'd missed and then Tony hesitated, fidgeting with the marker before he finally said, “I was there the last time they…” Tony blew out a breath, unable to finish his sentence. "With the.."

“The chair,” James finished for him.

“Yeah. And I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Why? You weren’t one of…” James made an aborted gesture towards his head. “I knew them. I didn’t remember them, but…I knew them.”

“Because I didn’t stop it earlier. I mean, I didn’t know about it, but it was because I didn’t _want_ to know. I was scared and…” Tony swallowed thickly and forced himself to keep going. “Weak. I let Hydra break me down for so long and they didn’t even need the chair to do it.”

“How long?”

“Over twenty years. Since I was sixteen.”

“ _Sixteen?_ Christ, you were a child,” James said with disgust. “Where were your parents?”

“Um…” Tony glanced over at him and grimaced. “They died. When I was eighteen.”

“Died?” James caught the look on his face and cursed long and low under his breath. “It was me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Tony fidgeted with the marker in his hand. “I told them what was happening, and Hydra had them killed.”

“Ah, fuck. When you said we had a bad history you weren’t fucking kidding.” James ran a hand over his mouth and crossed his arms. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s not like it was _your_ idea,” Tony started, and then got cut off when James snorted. “What?”

“Look at us idiots, apologizing for shit that was Hydra’s fault,” he said. “I’m sorry Hydra made me pull the trigger on your parents. You’re sorry Hydra tortured and brainwashed me. I hope you got me out because you have a plan to make _Hydra_ sorry I killed your parents and they brainwashed me,” he said, pointing to the murder board.

Tony met his eyes and felt a smile tug on his lips. He pulled out the picture of Ana, Edwin, and Maria from Christmas out of his pocket and propped it up on his desk. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”


End file.
